Cheese Pumpkins and Chili

My husband has always wanted to grow pumpkins.  For some reason it seems to be his farm fantasy, but with a SFG it is just not an option.  Still, I decided to give them a try this year....not sure where to sow the seeds since I believe the pumpkins will be too heavy to trellis.

With so many choices out there, I eventually settled on the  "Long Island Cheese" variety for a number of reasons.  The name has always intrigued me, they look cool, they are of the c. moschata family - and therefor hopefully borer resistant- , and they are rumored to give good puree.  Turns out Libby's (my favorite canned brand) uses the cheese variety of pumpkins for their orange goodness in a can.  For an interesting read on pie pumpkins, go here.

I have some of Michele's Crock Pot Chili going in the kitchen, and DANG!  I made a few substitutions along the way to utilize what I had on hand.  Firstly, I cut up some eye of round steak; then I cooked up some dried pintos and made a chili slurry in the blender as a partial substitution for the chili powder (which I ran out of and decided it was best to not use the coffee grinder to make some, great call on my part by the way);  the last bag of garden fresh tomato sauce from the freezer was subbed for canned.  The pinto's and dried chilies came from Rancho Gordo.  They have some of the best dried beans I have ever tasted, and man are those chilies hot!  As I am writing this my husband just asked me if I knew I had more steak in the sink.  *&*#, I thought the meat content was looking thin...seems as though I will be browning up more steak bits before the night is over to toss in the pot!  Anyway, there is a shot of the still simmering Chili, thanks to Michele over at Give A Girl A Fig for sharing such a great recipe with us.  (This batch is going to require some serious sour cream and beer to tame the heat!!!)

Todays Harvest, Free Seed Offer

If you could have seen me this afternoon picking away in the garden I would have had a satisfied smile on my face. In my harvest basket today there was my first eggplant (EVER!!), my first red-ripe Carmen pepper, some zucchini, beans, and tomatoes. All these goodies weighed in at 5.6 lbs! I feel the urge to make more oven-dried tomatoes (pictured below), but then that leaves few for fresh eating. What to do?

Johnny's sent out a letter to it's customers, in it are some suggestions for crops to plant now as well as an offer for some free seeds. The offer is in bold print in the close-up picture along with some of their suggestions for sowing now. The letter also mentions the late blight disaster, and how to use row covers as season extenders. I am posting this just for you Thomas (over at A Growing Tradition)!

I have some baby acorn squash growing and the carrots finally seem to be happy to grow in my garden, I will actually need to do some thinning soon. I must go check when sweet potatoes become ready for harvest, I am dying to dig down and see what (if anything) has grown. I know it is way too early, but I can anticipate right?? :)

Bean Bugs, CSA, and Sunflowers

I have been picking these fuzzy things off my beans by the dozen. May be time for some spray action.

The first sunflower, "Bashful", a dwarf variety from Johnny's Seeds. Next year I will be sure to buy some with more color to add to the mix in the whiskey barrels. These are in with the nasturtium and winter squash, described here in an older post.

CSA pick-up yesterday, I haven't been keeping up with my weekly records here.... the share has been a let down the last couple of weeks though it was better this time. I don't know that I will be doing a share at this farm next year, though I will consider doing one elsewhere. Last week my basil was bad the day after pick-up, and I have the same problem with other items in the past. The last two pick-ups were coming in at a $14.00 value at market by my calculations, way under the $19/week average I pay for the season......AND they charge you their market price for any extras you pick-up, so much for a share-holder's discount. The positives have been good tasting berries and a nice variety of produce (not all greens, kale, etc..)

Today's share:

• pint blueberries
• sm. container cherry tomatoes (1/2 pint?)
• corn, 3 ears
• 1 summer squash
• 1/4 lb greens
• spring onions, 1 bunch
• bunch of parsley
• 1 cuke
• 3 peaches

Oh, and I made oven-dried tomatoes yesterday with the cherries and plums from the garden. They look yummy, I am really wishing I had a Food Saver right now to pack them for the freezer. I am too lazy (hot) to post a picture right now.

Recent Harvests

Another couple of pounds from the potato patch, super-tiny shallots, and some beans'n greens.

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My biggest tomato harvest yet, guess I should go peruse those recipes I posted recently......


The shallots were dying back and needed to come out. The cloves are so small, can I just separate put them back in for next year? They almost aren't worth saving to eat.

One of my blogging friends is doing an e-book give away over at Life Throught The Cracks. She is concerned with the possibility of food shortages in our future and wants to promote food security, head on over and check it out!

Garden Update

Here is a recent harvest of lettuce, peas, tomatoes, cukes, and squash. This is starting to be a typical day of picking for me which is very cool.

I am deliberating over whether or not to dig up the rest of my Yukon Gold potatoes yet. This will be my second dry day in a row, a rarity these days. Scattered T-Storms are in the forecast over the next week. If I have late blight and don't know it, leaving them in the ground for another week or two would be beneficial. Will all this wet weather encourage them to rot if I leave them be?

I think some of my peppers are ready for harvest. The Joe NuMex variety is to be picked while small and green I believe.....but I am not even positive that is the variety I am talking about. They have grown quite a bit since I took this picture. Maybe they are the Carmen Sweet Peppers?? Little fingers removed all my markers. Edit: Joe E. Parker is an Anaheim chili.

I have a few baby eggplant growing, very exciting stuff! (I think I now know why it is called an 'egg-plant'!)

The green beans and zucchini are there for picking every now and again. I ripped out most of the beans since they were ridden with blight (pictured below). Most of them were laying on the soil, not climbing the trellis as they should have been.....the heirloom varieties are just not holding up as well for me. The good news is the other bean patch is disease free so far (me knocking on wood).

Here is a close-up of the first dahlia to bloom. I put the tubers in the perimeter of the asparagus bed which seems to working out so far, the asparagus is holding them up!

Garden Tour

This first picture is of my blustery back yard, now you can fully understand why my garden is in the front yard.

My messy garden needs some clean-up! As you can see I am still in the 'container planting phase' which is ridiculous considering we are almost into July, darn weather, so pardon the bags of soil, peat pots and containers scattered about. I will post some close ups of the planted containers another day. The kitchen garden is made up of six beds; 4 are constructed with 1x8 cedar boards; 2 are deeper with a combination of 1x boards. How deep you ask? I forget. 12 and 18 inches maybe? I am sure my husband didn't forget since he was lucky enough to rip the boards down to size. (thanks honey!)



The first bed is home to my asparagus (and some peas and milkweed for fun). The second has three rows of tomatoes. There are a handful of basil plants through out along with a row of red onions and 2 rows of cut-n-come again lettuce interplanted.







The third and fourth beds are Cucurbits and Roots. The one in the foreground is divided into 3 sections and contains carrots and herbs; potatoes; carrots and sweet potatoes. The vertical bed behind has cukes, winter squash seedlings, marigolds, and sweet alysum. Some of these seedlings are too small to be seen.

In the fourth bed I have legumes, beans, peppers, onions. the peppers were stuck in to separate the legumes and onions since they do not enjoy being neighbors.

The final bed is the one that gives me trouble. A few plantings of spinach, beets, and chard have been ripped out and started over or replaced with something else. Currently it holds a variety of salad greens, 2 rows drying beans(pole), bush beans, another row of pole beans, zinnias,3 peppers, 1 eggplant and some bunching onions. It's picture can be found below in the last post.

Bye-Bye Beets and a Biodynamics Intro

What is Biodynamic Agriculture? Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association
Posted using ShareThis. A very interesting topic for sure. I like the idea of trying to make our food as nourishing as possible. To learn a little about this fascinating form of agriculture click on the title in purple text above.

I treated myself to a couple of new books this weekend:

Farmer John's Cookbook, The Real Dirt On Vegetables- tales and recipes from a CSA
http://www.angelicorganics.com/ao/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=130&Itemid=180 I am IN LOVE with this book though I have only sneaked a peak here and there and am really looking forward to reading it from cover to cover. This book also touches on Biodynamic practices a bit.


Jerry baker's Terrific Tomatoes, Sensational Spuds, and Mouthwatering Melons- this book is full of growing tips written by a man who learned about gardening from his Grandmother during the war, and is full of "Grandma Putt's old-fashioned grow-how".
http://www.amazon.com/Bakers-Terrific-Tomatoes-Sensational-Mouth-Watering/dp/0922433925
I yanked my pathetic chioggia beets this weekend, they are just not growing as they should. I think I need to modify the soil before trying them again for fall. They had lots of organic matter, maybe too much. That darn horse farm compost again, very heavy and we loaded that bed full of it. From Jerry: "Even small beets send their roots a long, long way into the ground. If they have to struggle through heavy soil or bump up against underground obstacles, they won't develop the way you want them to." These suckers were put out in the coldframe way back in March. I have wasted enough time on them and will be devoting their plot to a more successful crop of bush beans.

How My Garden Grows, June 2009

(Click photo to enlarge) Bush beans, squash blossom, dwarf snap peas, fuzzy baby plum tomatoes, cuke blossom, strawberries in hanging bags, straw bales for planting, seedlings in whiskey barrel, bean sprout emerging.

Mother Earth News

Today I received my first issue of Mother Earth News www.motherearthnews.com and I can not wait to get into it, especially the bit on beans. I have many varieties of beans to experiment with this season and zero experience.